Then you're not alone. Over the years I've spoken with many independent business owners planning an upgrade to their website and thinking about spinning graphics, flash, carousels, and such. The obvious attraction is that done well, they can boost your company's image.
Without proper planning your site can disappear from the search engines.
Recently, a friend of mine allowed one of his employees to redesign the company's website. The employee was skilled in graphics and web design and my friend felt comfortable turning over the project. Even though I had strongly encouraged my friend to attend our workshops, he is, like other independent business owners, extremely busy and looking to hand off this project to someone else. (See my post, Time and Money to Burn)
Weeks later, my friend asked me to look at the results and offer some advice on how they could increase visibility in the search engines.
After just a few minutes of research, I had uncovered some disturbing news. The website, which previously had a few pages showing in Google was nowhere to be found. The site didn't even show up on the first page for the company's name.
Why?
The new website had absolutely no text on the home page. It was all graphics.
I clicked through the rest of the site. No text, anywhere.
Google crawls websites by a software program that we refer to a crawler or a spider. It's not a human. Words that appear in a graphic appear as nothing to a crawler.
It's the end of 2010 and my friend has a new website that will have to be overhauled, again. (I hope he will make time for our strategy workshop.)
If search marketing is important enough to invest any time or money in, then it is important to have the right strategy. You don't have to spend a fortune, but you do have to invest some time. The payoff is worth it. Otherwise, you're just letting your competition get further and further ahead.
Denise
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